AIDS is not just a serious threat to our social

"AIDS is not just a serious threat to our social and economic development, it is a real threat to our very existence, and every effort must be made to bring the problem under control."President Moi⁴³

However the president also said that his government and Kenya's churches would not advocate the use of condoms as a method of prevention because this would encourage young people to have sex.

A research study published in November argued that male circumcision could help to reduce HIV infection rates in Africa and Asia.⁴⁴

At the request of countries around the world eager to reach the age group at highest risk, the 1999 World AIDS Day campaign, "Listen, Learn and Live!", continued to focus on people under 25.⁴⁵

By the end of 1999, UNAIDS estimated that 33 million people around the world were living with HIV/AIDS and that 2.6 million people worldwide had died of the disease in 1999, more than in any other year since the epidemic began.⁴⁶ It was also reported that for the first time more women than men were infected with HIV in Africa.⁴⁷

"In 1992, a team headed by the late Dr. Jonathan Mann at the Harvard School of Public Health, published estimates of HIV infections in sub-Saharan Africa ranging from 20.8 million to 33.6 million by 2000. The World Health Organisation criticized Dr. Mann's estimates as excessive. Now academic scientists are criticizing the figures of Dr. Piot's Team. 'When we look at the figures today, they are worse than the scenarios Jonathan had published,'Dr. Piot"⁴⁸

The World Bank warned that the effect of AIDS in Asia could be to erase the region's economic gains over the last two decades unless governments maintained funding for social programs. The United Nations estimated that 7 million people in Asia were living with HIV/AIDS.⁴⁹